The faction server has undergone extensive changes. All plugins have been rewritten in Java 8 for the better performance and stability. What does it mean for the players? Better uptime and no crashes. There was some downtime recently, but it wasn't related to the faction server itself but more to the building that houses the faction server. Lag, crashes, and downtime were the biggest problems we had. Hopefully the faction server and the network will grow due to the new updates.
I think I have only been on factions once, and whenever I am online its down. But I have not been online for the last 3 weeks so idk.